The Kimball graphic. (Kimball, Brule County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1905, 1887-12-30
The Christmas of Dickens.

Avn hIhbllCIS
more sympathetic heart ever looked
out upon the Joy and woe, the strength
and weakness, the hope, the struggle,
the longing, and destiny of human
kind. than did Charles Dickens. His
pages overflow with this boundless fell
low kindness, and bring to every heart
the awakening touch of compassionate
interest in the hut of poverty, the hovel
OF vice, the home CT misfortune, the
abodes OF human suffering and crime.
A mind SO keen to nnalyze and con-
strue the conflicting harmonies of all
that great heart diapason of ragged
and hungry humanity could not forget
the Christmas chord which vibrates the
sweetest of all tones to the heart of the
poor, because Christ came humber
than any of thee, poorer than the
foxes of the earth which have holes, or
the birds Of the air which have nests,
so poor indeed, that He had not where
to lay His head.
To whom is not the flavor of Mrs.
Cratchit's Christmas dinner a iovP
The savory goose, the rarest bird in
the world to the Cratchit household,
with its gush of sage and onion stuff
fling, which the young Cratchits had to
stuff spoons in their mouth to keep
from shrieking for before their turn,
the potatoes which Master Peter had
mashed so vigorously, the apple sauce
sweetened by Miss Belinda, and that
wonderful pudding which Mrs. Cratch-
it, ''lushed and proudly smiling"
brought in hard and firm, like a
speckled cannon ball, blazing in the ig-
nited brandy, as 'bedight with Christ
mas holly stuck into the top" Hello,
what a scene that made! And after
dinner when the little family is drawn
up around the blazing hearth. and the
''hot stuff from the jug pass from one
mouth to another in the two tunblers
aud custard cup without a handle, and
the chestnuts on the fire suffering
noisily, what an immense crowd of
listeners all over tho world stand in
the background and listen to Bob's
toast: ga merry Christmas to us all,
my dears. God bless u.s. and re-echo
with poor crippled Tiny Tim, who had
hoped that people saw him at church
that day. because "it might be pleas
ant to them to remember, upon Christ
mas day, who made lame beggars
walk and blind men see,"-his little
":God bless us, everyone!'
And Scrooge's Christmas! Who does
not rejoice with Scrooge, sordid, cark
ing. selfish, hating Christmas as a time
for paying bills without money; a time
for finding yourself Il year older and
not an hour richer; q time for balanc-
ing your books and finding every item
dead against you; and who wished that
every idiot who goes about with ..Mer-
ry Christmas on his lips should be
boiled in his own pudding-who does
not rejoice with him when the spirit OF
the day finally trinmphed in his heart
and he sent out to buy Il Christmas
turkeyp "l'll send it to Bob Cratch-
it's he said, rubbing his hands and
splitting with q laugh. "He shan't
know who sends it. It's twice the size
CT Tiny Tim and the sordid old hear,
chuckled when he paid for it, and
chu"kled till he cried. Better, too,
than the Christmas turkey was his
greeting of Bob next morning when he
raised his %salar.: end pledged to assis,
the struggling family.
The spirit Of fellow love and sympa.
thy which has been divinely impaired
to the Babe in Bethlehem centuries age
and which ever since has been 4 living
messenger OF peace on'earth, had ttttu
suddenly touched withs mysticism.
the icy heart old scrooge and
recsst it is~a happier and mantle,
mould. The. sun never shone Sc
brightly to him as on that day, peoples
faces were never SO pleasant and his
own heart laughed. everything yielded
him pleasures. and afterwards it was
said of him that he knew how to keep
Christmas well if any man alive pos.
sessed that knowledg &c. Whoever can.
not find radiance in the Christmas sun.
shine would do well to test Scrooye's
receipt.
Again We are borne by the genius OF
our guide out upon the dark sea, tG
the sailors on the lonely watch, where
every man hummed II Christmas tune,
or had a Christians thought, or spoke
beneath his breath of by-gcne Christ.
mas days with homeward hopes in it
and every man on board, good or bad,
had a kinder word for one another on
that day than on any other of the year.
So say we, in the Pickwickian rhyme
"To The stout, old wight, gair vel
come tonight,
AS the King of the Seasons ALI"